


The girl with the green eyes.

by selftaughthuman



Series: Words by the Thousand [2]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Jealousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29087934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selftaughthuman/pseuds/selftaughthuman
Summary: Modern AU - 1000 words
Relationships: Korra/Asami Sato, Mako/Asami Sato
Series: Words by the Thousand [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2134245
Kudos: 54





	The girl with the green eyes.

The sun was elusive for nearly the entire day, hopping from cloud to cloud since it rose, her mind following suit. It skipped from idea to idea, thought to thought restlessly as hours passed. There was a sea breeze blowing in from the northeast, which stirred her unsettled mind further. The ocean was ten minutes away from both the place that she lived and the place that she went to college, albeit in opposite directions.

Korra almost never went to the sea in the summer. The combination of scorching sand and burning sun irritated her in a fashion that only her mother’s pronunciation of the word _'room'_ , as if it were a type of liquor, had before. _'Living-rum'_ or _'bed-rum_ ', or how when her mother said _'milk'_ , the _‘i’_ sounded like an _‘e’_. She’d been angry with her mom over it when she started kindergarten, those copied regional linguistics drawing jeers from children in her class. The annoyance of these incorrectly learned words chaffed her, sand on skin. Now she missed those tiny idiosyncrasies, wished she’d never banished them from her now unaccented speech. They could have been auditory reminders, things to smile at when they emerged…an unprompted reason to remember her mother when her parents moved back to their hometown.

She'd exited the science center seventeen minutes ago and decided to sit on one of the side patio benches rather than take the short drive home immediately. It was dread that stopped her. A dread over her roommate asking how her day was. The progression of events thereafter would be wholly disagreeable. She would lie because if she didn’t, there would need to be talking and if there was talking there would be that unappealing look of sympathy, insistence that she was wallowing over Mako, that it was unhealthy. Stress's detrimental and compounding effects would be mentioned; it was fully possible wellness might be discussed, and the worst of all possibilities…the importance of a self-care routine. It would be a procession of things that she knew to be true and had no interest in hearing, let alone accepting. 

It was better to wait another ten minutes on this too hard bench which made her hips ache. It was better to wait just enough time that she could be sure her roommate left for work. Then she could go home, shower, make half of a peanut butter and honey sandwich, cuddle with her dog, and binge-watch undisturbed for the remaining hours she planned to be conscious.

The clack of heels echoed behind her and she was unsurprised to see the girl with the green eyes emerge from the glass doors. The girl with the green eyes tended to leave the science center around the same time she did, always in fancy clothes and impeccable makeup. They passed by one another with serendipitous frequency around campus, besides. Sometimes there were only a few inches of air separating them, but not once had they acknowledged one another. Their lack of interaction was never more than fleeting paranoia, until recently.

Because Korra had found out two weeks prior that this stranger was in fact, Mako’s girlfriend.

The girl with the green eyes it would seem was the sole reason for her unhappiness, the obstacle preventing reprieve from her and Mako’s palpable tension. Was it a cruel coincidence or had the girl with the green eyes always known who she was? Did she sense Korra’s connection with her boyfriend? Had the girl seen them together? Did she ignore Korra on purpose? Was that why they never looked at each other? With each silent walk by, she felt her distaste for the girl with the green eyes grow. 

Thirteen days later, she’d descended into unrecognized pettiness born from the jealousy she harbored. Her mind now sought justification with each stolen glance. The ache of repressed feeling fueled her caddy musings. Staring from her position on the bench she watched in her peripheral vision. Leaning casually against the brick beside the door, the woman was perfectly positioned near a bump-out, the seam of which drew one’s eyes helplessly upward. 

The girl with the green eyes Korra decided, was too tall…gratuitously tall in fact. Those heels felt mocking, as though it weren’t enough to be taller than average to start…as if a few more inches were somehow needed. 

The girl with the green eyes Korra decided, was too beautiful...gratuitously beautiful in fact. That attractiveness felt mocking, as though it weren’t enough to be better looking than average to start…as if highlighting those already superior features were somehow needed.

That height and those looks; they were total peacocking, an insult to injury. And those eyes were an annoyingly pure shade of green, like a jade stone. There was no brown to provide a stitch of relief from saturated and bewitching verdant intensity.

In imagined conversations, Korra confronted the girl with the green eyes. Bitterly she sketched the landscape of their anticipated dialogue, erasing and shading the expected snobbery and vacuousness until it pleased her. The perfect comebacks and cuts, untouchable in their flawlessness were filed and cataloged for some victorious future that felt increasingly inevitable. As she realized ten minutes had been lost, Korra rose, walking purposefully, ready for a fight unlikely as it was. The girl with the green eyes happened to glance up exactly as she approached. Their gazes locked for the first time, sizing each other up, silent recognition.

The metal handle of the door was pulled open in a display of polite chivalry, a warm unguarded smile on red-painted lips making that face impossibly more beautiful; both gestures given unprompted and to Korra alone. A single moment and she was sucker-punched, a direct hit to her righteous umbrage. It shattered, the pieces crunching beneath her feet as she walked through the entryway in ashamed confusion. A blush gnawed away at her resentment while she begrudgingly mumbled her first word to the girl with the green eyes. 

"Thanks."

_End._


End file.
